


The Wolf in Red

by siojo



Category: Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF!Stiles, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Family Secrets, Implied Character Death, Implied Mpreg, Implied Relationships, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-13
Updated: 2012-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-18 14:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siojo/pseuds/siojo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She passes it down, from mother to child, from father to child, until it ends up in his hands. The story and the cloak just as they where the day they were made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wolf in Red

They call it a gift, a proposal, finding the bundle of red fabric on the front step of her house, a present like so many before her have received. Everyone crowds in close when she unfolds it, untwisting the fabric until it falls to her feet, just taller then she is with a hood. Inside of it is lined in satin, soft against her hands, except for the hood, lined in velvet that shines the same shade of red as the rest of it, the same almost blood colour. She hangs it on the rack like her Father's coat and pretends that it doesn't exist, pretends that she doesn't know what it means the way she pretends that the woods aren't her's the same way they belong to a wolf.

She pretends that her friends don't avoid her, ignore her messages and lie so they can't be seen together, and that the adults don't whisper about her as she wanders then streets, of how she's been raised to think she's too good for such a proposal and that she thinks she deserves more then a cloak of the brightest red and the softest satin. Ignores the questions from her Mother as to why she doesn't wear her gift and listens to her Father when he tells her how prey hides and escapes. Mother doesn't listen to Father, laughing as she calls him a drunk and leaves them to speak, pretending that she doesn't know what the girl will use the knowledge for, of hiding from wolves and making them hunt instead of going willingly.

  
"Grandmother is sick," Mother explains after her sixteenth birthday, "And we are going to send her a basket and you to help her for the day. Your father is off some where in the woods and I have much to do, so you must take her the basket."

"Yes Mother," She answers arranging the basket to hide the hunting knife she stole from her Father, "Anything for Grandmother."

Mother holds it out to her when they reach the door, "So I can see you walk, after all it's a long way and you remember what happened to the Baker's son."

She does, remembers the men running out into the woods as the boy screamed and cried. Remembers how they found him, torn apart and flesh rend from bones. His Mother had covered him with a white sheet that was turned red and dripping before they reached the town, leaving a trail of blood behind them, the way so many had blamed her because she would not accept. The wolf that prowled the village edge in wait of something that the girl wouldn't give him.

It feels like a noose tied tight around her throat, the hood pulled up over her head, the velvet soft against her cheek as she goes. The whispers follow her until she reaches the town's edge, the voices just as silent as the forest. Pausing long enough to slip the blade from her basket and into the boots that her mother had once used, the chill of the blade calming against her calf. Continuing into the woods as the whispers start back up.

  
"What a lovely red cloak," The voice comes from the edge of the trail startling as it appears, "How lovely and soft it must be, were ever did you find such a thing?"

The wolf peers from behind a bush, eyes wide and staring as he speaks.

"My Mother made it for me," She lies, pulling one side in close to hide the handle of the knife from sight, "I'll tell her you paid her such a complement good Sir, she'll be most pleased."

The wolf smiles, teeth sharp, "And where does the girl with the red hood wander on such a day as today? Surely one, such as yourself, has more to do then simply wander my woods."

"Grandmother is ill, my Mother tasked me to give her these. Simple things, good Sir, to make her feel better soon."

"Ah, then off you must go," Agrees the Wolf, ushering her down the trail, "Hurry before you are late."

She moves away as he heads back into the woods, steps as calm as they where before he appeared until she can no longer hear him and then for another twenty paces more. Bending ever so slightly to grasp her knife before running away.

The wolf does not appear, not even when she slows down before Grandmother's house and knocks twice on the door. A man invites her in instead.

  
Grandmother calls him a hunter, not huntsman or trapper, just a hunter. He's captivating with eyes that shine between shades of brown and hair thick and curling at the temples, speaking in soft tones as he helps her unpack the basket she brought.

Every day she walks the trail from home to Grandmother's house, talking to the wolf on her way, who teaches her how to move through the woods like he does, and the hunter who liked to listen to her speak. Sneaking away after Grandmother gets well to meet the hunter, further and further into the woods as her red cloak trails behind and her hood pulled up high.

  
"Who do you like more," The hunter asks one day, "You always talk of this wolf, do you prefer his company over mine?"

"Yes."

She doesn't mean to say it, while the hunter is kind and never expects anything, the wolf treats her as if she is just as dangerous as he is. Treats her as if she is not prey to be stalked, but a predator to be watched just as closely as the hunter would watch him. When the hunter leaves, angry words on his lips, the wolf is at her side. Pressed up against the red of her cloak and smiling.

"You like me?" He whispers in what can only be delight, "You never did say."

She laughs, fingers threading through his fur, "Am I to believe you didn't know? I thought I spent more time getting lost then I ever did with him, he didn't teach me how best to kill a rabbit for it's fur or how to run through the trees with out a sound."

"So you accept then?"

"I think I shall. How long have you been hunting me, my wolf?"

Her wolf changed into a man, hair thick and curling at the temples, "Just as long as you've been hunting me, for as long as you have wondered past my woods and never quit staring back at me."

 

Her daughter watches as her siblings forms bleed from wolf into human and back again, sighing because she can't join in. So she gathers the girl close and tells her stories of a girl-child, almost grown, who had been proposed to with a cloak of red and how she defied what it meant until she could fight by the wolf's side. Fought alongside a wolf, like her siblings, and the red banner that flew on her back. Wolf brings her leather to stitch together for gloves, carefully testing knifes and melding them together like claws, a wolf that was human, more so then the shifters amongst her children. And when her daughter is almost grown and her siblings leave to fight, she pulls the read cloak from the locked trunk by her marriage bed and presses it into her daughter's hands.

"I believe it's your turn to fight alongside the wolves."

 

 

Aria laughs as her son shouts that he'll be a wolf one day, pats him on the head and lets him run off, closing the book and settling it back in the trunk. Her fingers run over the cloak, as red as the day it had been gifted, remembering the blood that had covered it as she had fought alongside the wolves that she had called her family until she had decided to stop. Can recall the way the wolves had followed her though the woods and fought at her side until the claws of their enemies had taken her ability to run as quiet and swiftly as they did. John doesn't know exactly what she's left stored up in the attic, she didn't bring much when they had moved in together and that she doesn't speak much of before they met.

She locks the trunk up as tightly as she can, because the cloak must wait for her son if it wants to be worn again. She's too grown to wear the gloves or the cloak that her mother had given her, and Aria has given up that life for her husband and son. But Aria teaches him, teaches him the way her family taught her, with tricks for cooking and simple things that make being the one in the red cloak easier. One day Stiles will wear it the way Aria did and she'll teach her son how to keep himself alive as he runs with the wolves that will be his pack just like her's had been.

 

Stiles is sixteen with the Alpha pack breathing down their necks when he finally claims it. Jackson's dead, killed by one of the twins and Boyd and Erica are missing, having run away from the pack. Hands shaking as he ties the cord round his neck and takes the gloves, with blades like Wolverine's claws before closing the trunk and going to meet the pack. The ride to the meeting place is shorter then he remembers, the street lights glinting off the blades from where they rest in the passenger seat.

Derek and Peter stop when he climbs out the jeep, pulling on his claws while Scott and Isaac laugh, Lydia snorting once before turning away. Danny glances up long enough to see red and then back down at his computer screen, but he hasn't been the same since Jackson died, barely there when he's in a goal post and crying when he should be sleeping, Lydia just hides it better, the key she gave Jackson on the necklace he gave her.

"Oh, I am so very glad you didn't take my offer," Peter croons slipping close to run a finger down the cloak, "To end your line would have forfeited my life, a Red, here and on our side."

"Not your's," Stiles states just as clearly as he told Scott about Lycanthrope, just as excited and knowing, "Derek's. I've always wound up on Derek's side, Derek's Pack, I might as well make it official."

 

  
Scott stares at him with those sad puppy eyes, wide and confused just like he always does when Stiles pulls something that he doesn't understand, but there's no time for him to ask. Danny and Lydia are piling into Jackson's car, the Whittemores had allowed Danny to have it but it's still Jackson's even though it's in Danny's name, and heading off to Deaton's office. They'll be the ones helping the vet stitch up Stiles when he comes in more injured then anyone else, if he comes in injured at all.

He fights alongside them, cutting through the Alpha pack like paper while their eyes catch on his cloak, older then even they can lay claim to. Stiles isn't kind, even when they attempt to surrender, he follows Derek and Peter in killing them, Isaac circling to make sure they don't escape. He's not as kind as Scott is, he can kill them and not care, people forget that, Scott forgets that.

Scott forgets that it was _Stiles_ that suggested they go hunting for the missing half of Laura Hale's body the night he got bitten, that _Stiles_ threw the Molotov Cocktail that lit Peter Hale on fire for Derek, that _Stiles_ suggested killing Jackson when he was Kamina while Scott argued that they should try to help him first. Forgets and stares at Stiles as he cleans the blood from his blades and vomits over the asphalt.

 

  
It's not a perfect ending, not like Disney but so very similar to the Fairy tales that came before, like the original Little Mermaid or Sleeping Beauty, so very bitter sweet. Scott leaves chasing Allison's scent from Beacon Hills and off into the states with the faint hope of finding her before she moves on from him, Erica dies before they save her from the Alpha pack, her body carried back to the Hale house to be buried under a tree that they pick for her and surrounded by wolfs bane, and Boyd changes, but it's better then it was for those that are left behind. Lydia stays and falls in love, Danny smiles again, and Issac's nightmares grow less and less common.

His father doesn't talk to him, stops accepting his calls and ignores him when they meet in town. Melissa takes care of him though, makes sure that his dad eats his veggies and won't die of a heart attack even though she's lost her own son and he never calls. It's almost better that way, Stiles thinks when they get attacked by other creatures that go after family and friends, because nothing will go after his dad if they think that they no longer care. Perhaps his dad does care, in his own way, but Stiles is too different to fit into the world that his dad does, he's just as much of a wolf as Derek and Peter and Isaac, even though he is so very human. 

 

  
And when Stiles', their, daughter watches Derek teach their son how to shift, he pulls her close and tells her stories of men and women that fought like wolves and wore cloaks of red, teaching her the way he remembers his mom teaching him until she's sixteen. When Derek lets their son round up his cousins, Lydia standing proud with Peter's arm around her shoulders and Danny biting his lips as Issac tries to smile by his side, Boyd with his jaw twitching as his child prowls the edges of the group much like he has since forever, since before he lost Erica. Stiles presses the cloak and the gloves into her hands, folded up just like in his stories because his children are going to war and they will go together.

"Are you ready to fight alongside our wolves?"

**Author's Note:**

> Now with fanart by Xanehawk : http://xanehawk.tumblr.com/post/60312104370/the-wolf-in-red-by-siojo-on-ao3-fanart-from-left


End file.
